Monday, June 11, 2012

Today's Headlines

Israel stripped more than 100,000 residents of Gaza and some 140,000 residents of the West Bank of their residency rights during the 27 years between its conquest of the territories in 1967 and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994. As a result, close to 250,000 Palestinians who left the territories were barred from ever returning.

Vandals slashed the tires of seven cars in the Arab neighborhood Shuafat in East Jerusalem early yesterday - one car was sprayed with the word "Ulpana," the part of the Beit El settlement where the High Court has ordered homes demolished.

"We got up in the morning and that's what we saw," said Ibrahim Salah, a resident of Shuafat. "The people here are simple folk who want to live in peace. I don't understand why people are doing this. This country is becoming racist .... Now foreign laborers are being targeted as well. Racism is rife in Jerusalem because of radical Jewish groups."

Late Thursday night, vandals slashed the tires of 14 cars and sprayed racist slogans on three of them at the Jewish-Arab village Neveh Shalom near Latrun. Graffiti was also scrawled on the entrance to the community's bilingual Arab-Jewish school.

The slogans included "Death to Arabs," "Revenge," and "Ulpana." The secretary of the Neveh Shalom Association, Gideon Suleimani, sees the vandalism as "an attack on the idea of coexistence - the political idea on which the village was founded." The police are investigating the incident.

At least 10 slogans were found on the walls outside the museum, with slogans such as: "Hitler, thank you for the Holocaust", "If Hitler did not exist, the Zionists would have invented him", and "Zionists! You declared war on Hitler in the name of the Jewish people, you brought upon the Holocaust."

Some of the slogans were signed with the words, "The World Zionist Judaism."Jerusalem Police suspect that those responsible for the graffiti are anti-Zionist Haredi Jews, similar to the vandalism that was found at Ammunition Hill memorial site earlier this year.

I just looked at the photos of the vandalism at Ammunition Hill, which was done just before Yom ha-Zikkaron and Independence Day, and it looks to me that it's the same handwriting. The messages are similar, too.

The graffiti included slogans slamming President Shimon Peres, as well as praise for German poet Gunter Grass. The slogans that were found included: “The evil Zionist regime will fall,” and “Gunter Grass – be strong and brave.”

Graffiti included curses against Peres, as well as Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai, calling Yishai a “Zionist Mizrahi.”

I presume the police have noticed that the handwriting is the same, and are using this information to find whoever has done this.